Last night we had a reception for the earlybird applicants to our coaching program and showcase, First Look Forum.  And though you may have missed out on the free wine, great food (thanks DWT!) and the chance to rub shoulders with the screening committee, some investor coaches, and alumni, we’re pleased to pass on some of the wisdom of the crowd.
CHEERS:

1)      First rule of the First Look Forum application: One-page max.

2)      Second rule of the First Look Forum: One-page max. That’s one side of one page. As Mark Twain says, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one.” We know it’s hard to distill months and years of your life into one page, but it’s a good forcing function—there’s nowhere to hide, and whatever your outcome with this program, you need to ask yourself and answer who’s your customer, how you’ll get to market, how you’ll make money, how you’ll scale and more.

3)      Have me at hello. Get your audience’s attention with a really compelling elevator pitch or tagline: 30 words or less.

4)      Get a second date. That’s the goal of a first date and that’s what this application is (or any executive summary).  That means you’re whetting your audience’s appetite, providing succinct but not exhaustive answers in each section.  Show evidence that you’ve identified the risks in your business, start to suggest how you have or will mitigate them.

5)      Show and tell? Share your assumptions about what will drive revenue. We only know one thing about financial projections—they will be wrong—but show us how you can make scads of money, don’t just tell.

6)      Tip your hand. Give us some insight into your “secret sauce.” Sell us on your sustainable competitive advantage—what can you do better than anyone else and what will stop them from doing it?

7)      The naked truth. Be crystal clear about what you do; if we get to the end of the application and still don’t understand the business, that’s bad.  You’re so close to your business that you can easily forget how to explain it to uninvolved third parties—and whether you’re pitching investors, courting business partners, or hiring new team members—you’ll need to be able to do that! Practice on your mom, your 8th grade kid, your neighbor.  And us. That’s what we’re here to do…help us help you!

JEERS:

1)      Send us a 10-page document.  We will only skim it, sorry to admit, or just quit reading after the 1st page.

2)      Tell us you have no competition.  Either you have no market or you haven’t done your homework.

3)      Say “we could explain our technology but then we’d have to kill you.” Investors won’t give you the time of day if they don’t know what you’re asking them to invest in.

4)      Submit a crazy hockey stick for financial projections.  An aggressive ramp is one thing, but orders of magnitude of uptake of your product, from one year to the next, is another.

5)      Overestimate, spin, obfuscate, exaggerate your traction. Integrity is key—give us the status of your company, product development, and market penetration.

INSIDER TIPS:

Two freebies, courtesy of FLF Alumni Jon Pincus and Bruce D’Ambrosio:

1)      Jon: When you’re getting coaching and feedback, ask questions back!  What am I missing? What are our obstacles? It turns out investors (and advisors) will think you’re super smart if you listen to their advice.

2)      Bruce: Fail fast. Iterate. Fail fast again. The trick here is perceiving the reason for your failure, being honest with yourself, taking advice to heart, and trying again.

We suggest you take Bruce’s advice: lather, rinse, repeat on your executive summary (the sooner you apply, the more feedback you can get between now and the 8/18 deadline).  And if you have any questions at all about the program, take Jon’s advice—ask! (rlovell@nwen.org, 206-902-4079). Now to take our own advice, we’re going to keep this to one page—signing off!

Syndicated with the blessing of xconomy’s Greg Huang– the author’s parting gift to Seattle and NWEN, as he returned to his Boston roots.

They are the holy triumvirate of the “gamification” movement here in Seattle. OK, I just made that up. But if you want to learn how to use video-game mechanics to enhance your business’s website, drive traffic and customers, and maybe boost your revenues, you could do worse than to talk to Scott Dodson, Neil Patel, and Keith Smith. Each is working on a different aspect, but it’s thanks to entrepreneurs like them—and more broadly, Seattle’s expertise in gaming and digital media—that the region has become an epicenter of activity in gamification of the Web.

Now we just have to be careful not to overdo it.

The two-minute history of gamification goes like this. Games have been around in some form since we were cavemen, possibly even before the inception of human language. Sports and competition are deeply ingrained in our psyche. Fast forward through board games, Dungeons & Dragons, and early console video games. Now gaming has gotten to the point where companies are using it to manipulate human behavior—namely, getting people to spend more time and money on the Web.

That’s according to Dodson, the co-founder of Seattle-based Bobber Interactive, who gave a brilliant talk on gamification at the NWEN Breakfast Buzz event last Friday. Dodson, who says he “gamified everything as a kid,” also talked about how adding a “game layer” has improved some absolutely vital functions in society, like air traffic control (through graphics and a game-like interface). It has also led to effective and economical ways of driving behaviors through things like Boy Scout merit badges and frequent flyer mileage programs.

But when it comes to the Web, adding game mechanics—like keeping score of points earned through various activities on a site—is all about the game metric (virtual currency), persistence (things carry over between visits), progression (do more and you earn badges or levels), and what Dodson calls the velvet rope (a certain amount of exclusivity and scarcity). Some early examples: Priceline (“you can win,” he says) and Google image labels. About 20 million Google image labels have been created by people playing a kind of matching game for a small reward. Another point he made is that games are fun and all, but tying game mechanics to real life is where the real payoff could come.

Some more recent examples of gamified websites or related services: Foursquare (of course), LinkedIn (which uses goal completion to urge people to finish their profiles), CauseWorld, MyTown, GroundSpeak, Urbanspoon, DailyBurn, Swoopo, Lockerz, Seriosity, Ribbon Hero from Microsoft, Mindbloom, and, yes, Bobber Interactive (Dodson’s financial services site). Meanwhile, DevHub, made by EVO Media Group, recently has added game mechanics to its website-builder product trying to become the go-to software platform to help companies add game mechanics to their websites. As I understand it, the main goal of this sort of gamification is to strengthen customer loyalty, not so much acquire new customers—though that might be a side benefit.

To that point, Neil Patel, the search engine marketing expert and angel investor, posted some interesting advice on his blog today about gamification. Essentially, he says game mechanics, if done properly, can improve a site’s optimization for search engines. In other words, you will rank higher on Google or Bing if you make your site more addictive. You can do that by adding scoreboards, rewarding people who comment and therefore add engaging content to your site, and giving heavy users certain privileges.

Any talk of addiction rings warning bells, of course. It also makes me think more about what Silicon Valley startup guru Dave McClure told us recently about appealing to consumers’ “reptilian psyche.” What he meant was that smart Internet entrepreneurs should engage with consumers by tapping into their primal urges for things like sex, money, and power. So add competition and games to the list of deep drivers of behavior. But with that comes the responsibility not to get carried away to the point where our children, and people in general, can’t do anything without being rewarded. (Sorry, my own editorializing here.)

Dodson, for his part, is well aware of the dangers of gamification. While he proudly says there’s nothing he can’t gamify, he sees efforts by Las Vegas casinos to install video screens as an extra layer on top of slot machines, for example, as falling into the “‘gamification for evil’ category.” When I caught up with him after his talk last week, he admitted that gamification in moderation is a wise philosophy. What’s more, he doesn’t see the game-mechanics trend as taking over the Web indefinitely.

“This is probably a 10-year trend,” he says. “Then it will morph into something else.”

Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy’s National IT Editor and the Editor of Xconomy Boston. You can e-mail him at gthuang@xconomy.com, call him at 617-252-7323, or follow him at twitter.com/gthuang.

Inspired by my friend and colleague Andy Sack, who suggested that poker is the new golf, I’d like to see that blog and raise it a post.  Having just joined the crew at Poker 2.0 for socializing and psychological warfare on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but notice the striking parallels between startups and poker.

Style of play: This is a mix of personality and your own goals for the evening (or your startup).

• In my case, my goals were fourfold: have fun, don’t buy in again more than once, don’t get pissed away on the blinds, and go down in a blaze of glory.   This is partly because I have no poker face whatsoever, and partly because I’m cheap. I’d characterize myself as a bootstrapper– more of a lifestyle business if you will.  Totally self-funded, lower stakes, and no one’s money to lose but my own.
• Some players who shall remain unnamed appeared to have some angel funding.  They definitely wanted to stay in the game and have a reasonable exit– but clearly had more money to spend than I did, as they kept rebuying. Am guessing their angels were pretty passive– most professional angels I know wouldn’t have continued to back some of those horses– and I had to wonder if they might have played a little smarter with less money to burn.
• Big Dog Bob Crimmins played smart but was swinging for the fences.  An experienced poker player (and startupper), he went after a VC-sized market and at least 10X return on the invested capital, and got it.  He didn’t flinch when the ante climbed to double the initial buy-in for the game, and narrowly missed taking it all (came in second).

Is this the hand? Play the man, not the cards.  But having a good hand doesn’t suck.

At my level of play (and that whole heart-on-my-sleeve read-my-face-like-a-book handicap), I actually need decent cards to give me the confidence to take calculated risks.  The more sophisticated players weren’t just playing their hands but reading those of their opponents,  and could have turned any hand into a winner, either bluffing or just flat-out buying the pot.  Hold that thought for a minute.

If you’re new to startups, you’ve got the short stack.  Low on money and street cred, high on passion and drive.   Let’s assume you’ve fallen in love with your idea– why else would you be doing it?  I’ve been playing poker for a few years now (I’m fairly certain that it’s a graduation requirement for the MBA to be conversant in both discounted cash flow analysis and Texas Hold ‘Em). But when I first started playing I was a sucker for pocket 8’s, and got kicked in the teeth every time.

In my line of work (and even more so as Program Director at the Alliance of Angels) I’ve coached over 600 companies on their business plans– and met some incredibly talented entrepreneurs with some less than stellar “hands.” If I’d developed rapport with an entrepreneur, I might suggest: “You’ve got the short stack.  And you need to ask yourself– is this the hand? Do you really want to go all-in on a two/eight off-suit?”    Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.   Savvy entrepreneurs can be great players, but need to stack the deck in their favor– if you don’t have the cards, deal yourself another hand.

And for the record, I’m happy to say my Poker 2.0 strategy worked out pretty well.  I satisfied my own personal goals: drank some fine Gentleman Jack whiskey, spent five hours with awesome people,  and as three full tables went down to one,  I was in the final six players.   But I played it my way, and it sure didn’t hurt to have pocket aces and the inside straight draw to take two big pots.   Big Dog Crimmins, you throw a great party.  And for the rest of us– in startups and poker– Live to See Another Hand.

Author’s note:  Crimmins out-played almost all of us– but if you want to know his tells, I can be bought for a shot of whiskey.

Full disclosure: as a mentor for TechStars, this author is not a completely unbiased observer…but now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,  here are a handful of reasons to get your application in today, and a few free tips.

1) Those 10 lucky entrepreneurs who are accepted will enjoy an in-depth, three-month mentoring program and a truly talented cohort of startuppers.

2) Resources include seed funding ($6K per founder), access to advisors, and exposure to area investors in a showcase at the end of the program (every major Puget Sound vc has backed this endeavor!)

3) Applications are due June 1, but if you apply in time, you may also get to attend TechStars for a Day on May 24.

Having read some 25 applications over the course of the last week (fear not, we’ve got 4-5 sets of eyes on every submission), here are a few observations for the good of the order:

1) Have me at hello The application is fairly informal and incredibly streamlined, but do take some time to think through that initial tagline. Starting with a clearly-articulated value proposition sets the stage and gives us the proper context for evaluating the merits of the business plan.

2) Help us help you. TechStars has a national– and international– reach, but we’re really looking for entrepreneurs who can take full advantage of this summer-long program. By no means need your company be based here, but plan to spend some significant time in our fair city, and let us know that you and your co-founder(s) are ready, willing and able to commit the time.

3) Speaking of co-founders, don’t go it alone. As much as TechStars was created to be a co-founder of your business, stack the deck in your favor by joining forces with another driven, talented co-founding entrepreneur, who shares your vision and rounds out your skill sets.

Get the dets on the TechStars site. Best of luck!

We can’t resist the opportunity to give another shout out to the twelve companies who presented at our third First Look Forum event yesterday, and the whole community of folks who made it possible! Both John Cook of TechFlash and Greg Huang of xconomy did some incredibly thorough write-ups of the afternoon showcase, so we’ll just chime in with some context around the program itself.

What is this event anyway? The forum itself is the end of a two-month application, screening and coaching program, but we hope just the beginning of a new path for these diverse companies!  Our twelve participants receive mentoring from a pair of coaches (primarily investors, with a sprinkling of serial entrepreneurs), a presentation workshop, and a personal coaching session from Pivotal Presentations.  The “piano recital” at the end is a great place to meet potential investors and advisors, but past participants have raved equally about the coaching and the big day.

What do these companies have in common? Our theme is innovation. It’s not all IT or Web 2.0 all the time. Remember this event is brought to you by the organization that featured the founders of Bacon Salt as keynoters in our signature Entrepreneur University!  Every company selected to present in First Look Forum had a unique value proposition and was at an inflection point in their business:

1. a local business, profitable going concern for 8 years, changing the game and going national
2. a travel-oriented company re-emerging from hibernation and hoping to take the industry by storm
3. a graduate of the Founder’s Institute embarking on the fund-raising adventure
4. a grant recipient and perennial UW business plan competition participant who met their first investor at FLF!   (scroll down for their identities!)

What else? None of these companies had done the dog-and-pony show to the membership of an organized angel group, nor received venture funding, so First Look Forum was their coming-out party.  Are these companies ready for investment?  Many will be in the next 6-12 months. This may explain how we can attract investors from some 20 investment groups, including: Alliance of Angels, OVP, Seraph, The Tacoma Angel Network, Founders Co-op, Divergent Ventures, Ignition Partners, WRF Capital, Madrona Venture Group, Voyager Capital, Integra Ventures, Puget Sound Venture Club, Keiretsu Forum, Zino Society and more.  In addition to serving entrepreneurs with coaching and connections, we provide a service to the investment community in sourcing early deals for their organizations.

The flip side of the coin of having ’something for everyone’ is that not every pitch will resonate with every investor.  We support innovative entrepreneurs of every ilk and are happy to showcase the many local flavors!  The home of Microsoft, Amazon, Real Networks and Expedia has also enjoyed decades of innovation from Boeing and Starbucks… NWEN members reflect this unique potpourri.

What did we take away from the big day?

• Always be closing: We believe every one of these companies had “steak” (one, literally ground into dogfood and frozen)….but the audience voted with their coins for some of the pitches that really “sizzled.”
• Investors will vote with their feet. From my time with the Alliance of Angels, whether a company is in materials science or software, deals get done when they have that needle-in-the-haystack advocate who steps up to lead.  Being genetically pre-disposed towards match-making (yes, I’m a yenta), it was incredibly fulfilling to see investors huddling with presenters in corners of the room during our reception.   Successful entrepreneurs create their own luck, but we can help them get lucky by bringing together a diverse set of investors and deals, adding a healthy dash of showmanship and a soupcon of alcohol.

Answer key below. Congratulations to all the presenters, finalists, runner-up and grand-prize winner, and thanks to the entire community of volunteers, coaches, and investors for supporting the area’s innovators!

1. Darwin’s Natural Pet Products
2. Inside Trip
   
3. Zendorse
4. Empowering Engineering Technologies
   

Being 1 of the 2 employees here at NWEN, I have to give a much needed props to our Board members, Committee members and volunteers. Without you, my job as the events and programs manager wouldn’t exist… as Rebecca and I would have lost our minds by now. NWEN plans to host 65 events in 2010, we know it is a big stretch, but we are geared up, ready and we have a team of committees on board to make sure our successes reach new heights in the organization.  This last month we had a wonderful turnout for events and we have over sold all of our eIQ’s thus far.

Just to share a personal experience of the strong community we have, this past week my computer and the NWEN website was infected with a virus. And without hesitation, Mike Davis (a current NWEN board member) dropped what he was doing to make sure we didn’t lose anything. With his hard work and dedication my computer and the website were saved and we didn’t miss a beat.

Our volunteers on the NWEN committees are such a strong link to making our events so successful! Helping to fuel the speakers needed for the topics that our community of entrepreneurs are requesting to hear.  We also have a number of volunteers that help out at our community events. I just have to say “Thank you!”  You really help to make my job run a lot smoother. Setting up for the breakfast and running the registration would be very difficult to do all on my own. All of the volunteers are members of NWEN, the committee and volunteering gives them the chance to get their hands dirty working first hand on events.

I have dedicated a special page on the our website to our Northwest Entrepreneur Network volunteer committee members, to see, click here. If you would like to view the hard working Board members of NWEN, click here.

Thanks again to everyone who strives to make NWEN what is it and what it will become! We look forward to seeing what 2010 brings!

-Katey Bailey

If you missed the “Plugging In” panel at this year’s Entrepreneur University, don’t worry- we can still be friends, and we’ll even share some tips on how you can maximize your networking opportunities around town.  We are happy feature this post by Josh Maher, Lunch 2.0 founder, the genius behind “Obey the Decider“, NWEN panelist and networking guru.    Check out the Thoughts on Networking post on Josh’s blog, and plenty of other juicy tidbits on his site. And if you still have an appetite for networking tips, please find another quick read on Networking 101.  Enjoy!

Thoughts on Networking

By joshmaher

I promised a follow-up to my last post, how to get plugged-in to the local network after I spoke at NWEN’s Entrepreneur University. It’s also a great follow-up to the last post about working less. So if you are looking for work, there are some things here that are good to learn. Thanks for everyone who sent feedback on their thoughts about the Seattle Startup community and networking in general. Here is half of the talk we gave at the NWEN EU event…

NWEN EU – Plugging-in

It was a lot of fun and interesting to learn from the attendees and co-panelists (Nathan Kaiser, Danielle Morrill, and Dave Schappell) what problems they had with networking and how hidden the local community appears when you are an outsider looking in.

The five points that I found most applicable were:

1. Do more favors for people in the community than you get from the community. The quality of favors you get in return will be worth it.
2. Ask for advice, not for assistance.
3. There are always going to be too many places to network and too many events to go to. Network where it is most convenient for you as you.
4. It’s ok to mix personal and business networking, it’s more fun when you are doing business with people you enjoy.
5. Use tools and system to manage who you are networking with, when you are networking, and why. Things like LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, salesforce are all great to help manage all of the connections and conversations. They are all useless if you are not using them to network with the people who will add value to what you are doing.

(6) – bring some breath mints or gum or something – bad breath sucks

A few of the follow-up conversations I had were also interesting…

I spoke with an attendee about the power of LinkedIN and how to go about using it to plan a conversation with someone either online or in-person. We used a scenario of a connecting with a Sr. Researcher at a company of interest. For my brief demonstration, I’ll say that I have a startup where I am trying to build a new touch based device that includes components of augmented reality for a medical purpose. For this I would start with a good LinkedIN search such as:

From here, I would expect to get a few folks in the Microsoft Research team locally and perhaps get some success…

With 9 results, I may not have much luck, but there isn’t too far to go to find out if I have a shot at finding the person that I’m looking for or not. To start, I’ll drill into each of these, keeping in mind that 2nd leve connections are easier to get to than 3rd level connections. So I’ll drill into Patrick Baudisch and see what I can find.

It doesn’t appear Patrick keeps his LinkedIN profile up to date which may be the case for researcher types. Business types are usually different and have a lot of information about what they do on their profile. The important thing though, is that Patrick does point us to his personal website. So let’s have a look…

ok, straight off of his website, this guy has done some projects with multi-touch at a nano level and blindsight (by the looks of the picture and name, I get the sense that he has figured out what is behind an object even though we can’t see it (kind of augmented reality). Hmm, sounds like a guy that may be up my alley, definitely worth following up with. Flipping back over to his profile, it’s time to see how easy I can make the introduction and if this guy would be interested in talking to me.

Looking back at the profile, I see that we are both connected to Scott Bright. I happen to be connected to Scott because of MindCamp (hence the need to attend a few good events, do some favors, so that you have the right connections to leverage when you need them).

In this case, I would ask Scott for some advice on how to meet people in the space that I’m looking for. If he doesn’t offer Patrick as a connection, I would ask directly about an introduction in-person or online.

—————————————————–

Author’s note: Thanks again to Mr. Maher for letting us re-post! Josh has great pay-it-forward karma and always minty-fresh breath.

As a sponsor of Startup Day and entrepreneur enthusiast, here’s a quick shout out and thanks to the Seattle 2.0 team and the army of volunteers who pulled off a great event!  The day was chock-full of casual conversations, and terrific speakers, who shared at least one common element: passion.  They combined healthy (if occasionally daunting) realism, with success stories, inspiration, and practical advice.   Full disclosure—while busy staffing NWEN’s display table, I couldn’t glean every ounce of advice from every speaker, so some sound-bytes and side-bars are reflected below.  That said, check out my personal top-ten take-aways:

• Caffeine’s got nothin on Cooperman. Started off the day with coffee, granola bars, and Hillel Cooperman, dropping an average of two f-bombs per minute, but great advice and anecdotes.
• Two to tango. Ksenia Oustiougova spoke candidly about the challenge of asking for support from the men in our lives (fill in “partner” of any kind and this is true.) Andy Sack’s start-up checklist includes the absolute necessity of getting buy-in and support from your significant other.
• Release early and often. Though his topic was on financing, talking with TA McCann at the event, he’s a poster-child for the importance of beta testing—lather, rinse, repeat..  Gist had something like 47 builds before the official launch. Absolutely fanatical about customer feedback. No wonder FOGs (friends of Gist) are a large and loyal audience!
• Just the stats, man. Dave Schappell’s estimate: one in 15 attendees of Startup Day will actually go try and start a business (and I’m just guessing this is a subset of the 25% of the audience who raised their hands when asked if they’d been called a workaholic before).  Talking with attendees, all of whom found the sessions valuable, a few said: I learned at this conference that I do, in fact, need to keep my day job. Good to learn that now, instead of a bank loan, two mortgages, and three awkward holidays asking friends and family for money later—this is clearly not for the faint of heart.
• People need people. We’ve all heard it before, but Alex Berg suggested a new twist on an old favorite: Jerks are “little jerk factories”; all the sudden you come to work wondering why you don’t like anyone you work with.  Every hire counts (and evidently multiplies!).
• Pick one. Ben Huh: you can be big or focused, but not both. It’s like the project management adage: you want good, cheap and fast?  Pick two.  Ben’s content-rich presentation on the stunning realities of monetizing web traffic dove-tailed nicely with Alex Castro’s talk on revenue models for Software as a Service offerings.  Good stuff.
• Fumpany. Mike Mathieu quipped that the worst insult you can get is: “That’s not a startup, it’s a feature.”  Back in my Alliance of Angels days, my colleague Kevin used to call those “fumpanies” (vs. companies).  If you’re a one-trick pony that could be considered a feature of an existing product, ask yourself what’s to stop the developer of that product adding on that bell or whistle themselves.
• The gift that keeps on giving: Check out the Startup Day twitter stream.  Lots of gems here culled from speaker presentations.
• Got a dog-sitter (thanks, Dave Schappell!).  Now it’s official.
• Got a couple offers for side jobs (thanks, Marcelo, for the pleasure of introducing Ben Huh, Ksenia Oustiougova, Alex Castro and Jonathan Sposato—extra love to the always-gracious Jonathan for suggesting that I become a voice coach—I’ll definitely keep my day job, but got a few business cards from folks wanting to pay for some voice-over work).

So if you’re in that elite group of folks who are inspired by what you heard and Startup Day, what next?  In this reporter’s opinion, sign up now for Entrepreneur University. It’s a logical next step where we’ll both inspire you with nationally recognized speakers and local heroes, and put you to work. With four interactive workshops peppered throughout the day, get your hands dirty wrestling with such challenges as “Will the dog eat the dog food? “How do I finance this puppy?”  “ How can I give my elevator pitch a lift? “ And “How can I harness social media and take the power to the people?”   Not to mention 90 minutes in which you can sit down with an investor one-on-one in our always-popular VC bistro….and/or sign up for a lunch date with experts in raising money, marketing, sales, law, and entrepreneurship.  Hope to see you there!

PS: Though we don’t plan to monetize these particular voice-overs, the NWEN board and friends will be showcasing their karaoke stylings at Hula Hula tonight at 7 PM.   Just sayin. If you read this blog post in time, don’t be shy…join us and grab the mic.

NWEN extended First Look Forum Applications until August 31. This allows for more time for your executive summaries to be reviewed before competing for the top 20 spots for screeching, then the top 12 spots for the actual First Look Forum.

Why apply?

* Every applicant will receive feedback on their executive summary. For those not selected to present at the event, you will receive a free “Think Like an Investor Workshop”
* At our inaugural March event, the 12 presenting companies enjoyed exposure to 17 different angel and VC groups
* As before, presenters will receive over 3 hours of coaching from investment professionals, and priceless advice on the fundamentals of their business.
* Reflecting on the spring event, 86% of presenters reported they met potential business advisors or investors

If you won’t be applying with us, please be sure tell a friend that could benefit from all the coaching received from this process. Go to our website to see the comments from the previous presenters and attendees feedback!

NWEN and The Zino Society are now offering reciprocal discounts to any entrepreneurs applying to both forums. Whether you are an early-stage innovator primed for First Look Forum, or an investment-ready deal ideal for ZZIF, send in your application and we’ll point you in the right direction at no extra cost to you. NWEN’s screeners will let you know if you’re too far along for our opportunity, and Zino will deduct $50 from their fee. To synch up with Zino’s schedule, we are extending our Early-Bird deadline to 7/31. Looking forward to your application!!

Be sure to follow us on facebook for all of our contest updates and pictures from our events.